Posted
by
samzenpus
on Thursday June 17, 2010 @11:07AM
from the jungle-news-network dept.

According to a Japanese study, monkeys are not immune to the siren call of the idiot box. It seems rhesus monkeys enjoy watching videos of circus animals. From the article: "The study found that when the monkey was witnessing the acrobatic performances of circus animals on a television screen, the frontal lobe area of its brain became vigorously active. The activity in such an area was significant in reflecting the monkey's pleasure, as the human equivalent is a neurological area associated with triggering delight in a baby when it sees the smile of its mother."

That's not surprisingly in the least since Chimps have been shown to like action movies and even porn. Chimps can become physically agitated when watching action movies or even scary movies. They seemingly even understand suspense, which seems to validate a higher level of intelligence. Like humans, chimps react to stimuli such as anger, violence, kindness, and sexuality. In each case, they have shown a propensity for enjoying the content of what is they watch; just as humans do.

While there's a lot of humour to be found in this article, there can be some benefit as well. While I couldn't help but laugh when I read the article, producing videos and having them broadcast to zoo animals (not debating the ethics of keeping zoo animals, except that they are there) may help stimulate them (for short periods) even though they are in relatively cramped quarters.

A) To find and parallels between the physiological make-up of monkeys and humans.B) To better understand Monkey behavior.

Not everything studied needs an immediate reason. sometimes the knowledge is it's own reward, and very often other people come along look at that data and then find a practicable use for it. Much of what Einstein did was worthless at the time. His work on the concepts that you could stimulate electromagnetic emission. It wasn't until much later that the LASER was actually built.

Einstein's Nobel was for his work on the photoelectric effect. As in "solar cells". That whole relativity thing was kind of interesting though, and it did get us to fission power. So one way or the other your monkeys can actually turn their plasma TV sets on to watch themselves without burning down their jungle.

Knowing our similarities to other primate species, I think they should direct and film some "TV drama" type performance of monkeys -- basically, a TV show that uses monkeys doing the kinds of social interaction monkeys do. Then, see if the monkeys are just as interested in watching other monkeys handle situations, as we are in watching humans.

Also, see if they're able to distinguish TV from reality, and if they start feeling strongly about the characters.

Of course, it could be difficult to get the monkey "actors" to cooperate.

Interesting intepretation, as "siren song" suggests a quite lull towards the "idiot Box". Whereas, when I read "siren call" I envisaged a clambering to arms(in front of the idiot box). I lived in a rural area and was a volunteer firefighter. So the station siren meant the later for those on call..

Strap a monkey to a board, stick some electrodes in its brain, then measure how happy it is. Show it some moving images, which distract it from the fact that it's strapped to a board with electrodes stuck in its brain. It gets less unhappy. NOBEL PRIZE!

Image you were locked in a cage. Now image that your wife is a hairy beast, your children don't listen to a word you say, and your best friend is fond of masturbating in public and flinging his own waste at strangers. What else are you going to do with your time?

Oh, I dunno. I'd probably pick some nits from my wife's fur, bare my teeth at the kids some, maybe masturbate, and then fling some poo (not necessarily in that order).

Watching TV is way, way down on my list -- at approximately the same level as sw

So take an animal, sequestered for experimentation, and give it a modicum of stimuli and see if it likes it? I tell you what, release the monkey, put a TV into the wild and see if free monkeys will stop and watch.

Nothing like "monkeys like to watch TV". The experiment only measure the activity of the monkey's brain when it is watching the movie, but not when it is NOT watching the movie or when it is watching something else. Actually the paper is more about this new brain wave sensor that they are developing than abo

Interestingly, these notions about "self esteem" had never been studied; they'd just been *assumed*, based on the notion that everyone likes to feel good about themselves. Recently some psych researchers took a notion to rectify this sad lack of actual documentation, and...

Contrary to common assumption, they discovered that the highest self-esteem was found in career criminals, who essentially believe they are better than everyone else, and therefore they believe they can do no wrong. (IOW, people who make